I know you’ve all grown tired of the “Trololo” meme, but this version brings some new life to Edward Hill’s interweb sensation. Performed on the Moog Etherwave Pro Theremin by Jairo Moreno.

 
When someone whose opinion you respect—in this case Steve Silberman of Wired News—sends you a link and the note “I promise you, the weirdest story you’ll read today (mine)” you take it seriously in my line of work. In this article for his new Neurotribes blog, Tripping Cyborgs and Organ Farms: The Fictions of Cordwainer Smith, Steve tells the unusual tale of Paul Linebarger, psychological-warfare expert and spy for the U.S. government. Writing under the pen name Cordwainer Smith, Linebarger wrote some unusually prescient science fiction tales that depicted bizarre advances in science and predicting dystopian futures as disturbing as anything in Philip K. Dick’s oeuvre:

After Scanners, Linebarger’s most unnerving creation was “A Planet Named Shayol.” (Sh’eol or שְׁאוֹל — “the pit” or “the abyss” — was the ancient Hebrew name for the land of the dead.) The story is one of the most haunting visions of an utter hell outside of Dante, with plot points anticipating current developments in tissue engineering and the infamous Vacanti earmouse that caused a flap at M.I.T. in 1996.

Published in 1961, it’s even druggier than Scanners, with a hipster nurse who gets her patients stoned on the fictional equivalent of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and a cow-faced organ farmer proffering a synthetic opiate called super-condamine. Linebarger writes about strung-out states of mind so convincingly, it’s clear that his experiences in the hospital as a kid left an indelible impression. One might even say that these experiences — along with his perpetual dislocation as the son of a spy — made the body itself, and all of culture, seem like an elaborate prosthesis imposed on the essential man. Ich bin ein Scanners, waiting for the next cranch.

Read more of Tripping Cyborgs and Organ Farms: The Fictions of Cordwainer Smith (NeuroTribes)
 

 

 
Why is it so damn fun when western rawk is done so wrong? In this case, its Iron Man, or at the least the main riff thereof, as re-imagined by one Soreng Santi. The provenance of the original recording is a mystery. Sounds 70’s to me.

Jaw Dropping doppelganger Sab-Jam from Sukothai psych-rocker Sroeng Santi. Iron Man meets Yama Yama on this original composition by a musical all-rounder who produced a string of Thai hard rockers until his freakish death in 1982.

 
Thanks Tony Coulter !

 
Apparently this stuff really drives the ladies wild:

Unique among all the essences ever devised by man or created by nature, STASH emanates from a plant long recognized for its aphrodisiac qualities. Its romantic bouquet imparts an aura of closeness only dreamed of between man and woman.

Make every moment count. Enjoy the mystery and enchantment captured in the romantic bouquet of STASH… the secret one. A great gift idea for him that will turn you both on!

(via Nerdcore via copyranter)

 
As is (tragically) the case with the Velvet Underground, there is precious little sync-sound footage of Iggy Pop and the Stooges in their heyday, although there was a fair amount of silent Super-8 film that was shot. (A guy I know purchased an old film projector at a flea market that came with silent footage of Iggy onstage circa 1973, believe it or not. He later sold it to Vh1).

This incredible footage of the Stooges comes from the Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival of 1970 (AKA Midsummer Rock Festival). Appearing on a bill with Grand Funk Railroad, Alice Cooper, Mountain and Traffic, the group performs “T.V. Eye” and “1970” as Iggy leaps into the crowd—probably inventing crowd-surfing in the process—smearing peanut butter all over his chest. It’s one of the greatest rock and roll moments of all time and resulted in the iconic photograph above. Thank the gods that this footage exists, too.

Note the square announcer’s reaction: “That’s… peanut butter!” Years later Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys took credit for bringing the tub of peanut butter from his home in Dayton, OH and putting it into the Iggster’s hands.
 

 
Rosemary Heinikel is a German actress, singer, soft core porn model and writer who, in the late 1960s, was an integral part of the German hippie subculture and krautrock music scene. As Rosy Rosy, Heinikel sang with Guru Guru and The Inner Space. In 1969, The Inner Space,  Irwin Schmidt, Michael Karoli, Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit, changed their name to Can.

In the videos collected here, Rosy and The Inner Space perform “I’m Holding My Nightingale” in the German film Kamasutra (1969) and provide the soundtrack for the film Agilok And Blubbo (1968), which includes the Nico-esque “Kamera Song’.

‘Kamera Song’s’  ‘Sunday Morning’ xylophonics drop like two-megaton teardrops around the vocals of actress Rosemarie Heinikel, here credited with her diva alter-ego, ‘Rosy-Rosy.’ The sleeve of the single features a still of Rosy-Rosy from the film and the provenance of her name is immediately obvious as she is depicted holding a machine gun while her pair of abundant breasts make her neckline not only plunging, but altogether insufficient in their attempt to modestly corral her assets. Her vocals are coy and cooing in German until she switches to bleating out slang English slogans such as “Mama!,” “Stop the war!,” “Make peace!” and “Cheese!” over Holger’s red-armed-hot-from-Vietnam bass strummin’ und drangin’ in the aggressive chorus.” The Seth Man.

 
More grooviness from Rosy Rosy and The Inner Space, including footage from Kamasutra, after the jump…

 
Lorenzo the parrot, a drug dealers best friend. The bird is the word.

 
Comrade Redgrave, campaigning as a MP candidate for the Workers Revolutionary Party, February 1974.

 
“What kind of parent would give their kid a middle name of Pepsi?” was how they put it at the J-Walk blog, causing me to laugh until I stopped.

From what I can tell, Ms. Sawyer is a real person.